Original editorial at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/keller-obamacare-the-rest-of-the-story.html?comments#permid=10259971:10260033
I am all in favor of ObamaCare, and I hope it "works", whatever that means. However, having lived many years in Germany, insured under their "socialist" public, mandatory health insurance and health care, i am amazed how utterly complicated, bureaucratic, inefficient and just plain bad the US healthcare system, including this patchwork of political compromises, ObamaCare, is. Americans pride themselves as "exceptional", and "consumer oriented/friendly" but in health care and health insurance, one can only call the American approach "exceptionally" bad.
Far from the horror stories, all right-wing propaganda, about long wait times, denied services and poor quality service in "socialized" medicine, we received prompt, high-quality and extremely personalized treatment in Germany. Never were there any long involved "application/vetting" processes to see if the services would be covered.
By contrast, six months into our last stay in Germany we were still fighting with Medicare and a US service provider about getting a routine annual checkup covered, which we chose to do before leaving the US.
In products and services with a strong consumer, competitive aspect, the US still shines. But anything involving primarily a "social service" aspect, where "market forces" are weak to nonexistent, such as medical insurance, medical service, social services in general, the US seems completely incompetent - Social Security and Medicare excepted, but those are from a different era...
Here a more complete (and more competent) critique of ObamaCare from the "German perspective":
http://www.welt.de/debatte/kommentare/article120872921/Warum-meine-Famil...
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